*Event is strictly by registration only as limited seating is available.

This April 2015, the NUS Museum will mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the University of Malaya Art Museum, the predecessor institution of the NUS Museum. The occasion is marked by our Anniversary Lecture, About Michael Sullivan by T.K. Sabapathy on Thursday, 30 April, 7pm at the University Cultural Centre Theatre.

About Michael Sullivan

In 1954, Dr. Michael Sullivan was appointed as Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Malaya. Consequently, he became also the founding curator of Singapore's first art museum and teaching collection - the University of Malaya Art Museum, located then at its campus at Bukit Timah. The study of history of art and displays of artefacts in a museum were envisaged as widening the scope of learning in a university in Singapore and the then Malaya. Today this collection forms the seed of the NUS Museum's South and Southeast Asian Collection.

Though trained primarily as a historian of Chinese art and with little formal education in museology or curating, Sullivan, in his short time here between 1954 and 1960, helped develop several important coordinates for the museum's developments. This lecture by T.K. Sabapathy, a former student of Sullivan, deals with the latter's tenure in the then University of Malaya from 1954-1960, his teaching of history of art, his research and writing on art in Southeast Asia and the establishment of the university art museum. In all these respects, Sullivan inaugurated the academic study of art and its histories in Singapore/Malaya. This illustrated lecture will feature both personal recollections and considerations of Sullivan as educator, curator and writer. It will be published later by the NUS Museum.

Speaker

T.K. Sabapathy has been teaching courses in the history of art since 1966 in institutions in the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Singapore; he is currently an associate adjunct professor in the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore. He was a student in Sullivan's class of 1958-1960, subsequently pursuing graduate studies in art history in the University of California, Berkeley, and in the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Sabapathy has researched into and published extensively on modern art and artists in Southeast Asia.